Shawnee Fossil Plant

Shawnee Fossil Plant is a coal-fired power station owned and operated by Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and is located about 10 miles northwest of Paducah, Kentucky, on the Ohio River.

The power station has ten coal-fired generating units and "net dependable generating capacity" of approximately 1,369 megawatts. TVA states that "the plant consumes some 12,350 tons of coal a day." Construction of the power station commenced in 1951 and was commissioned in 1957. According to the TVA the "plant consumes about 9,600 tons of coal a day."

TVA Announces Plans to Retire Shawnee Unit 10
On August 24, 2010 TVA announced that it will retire 9 coal-fired generating units totalling about 1,000 megawatts of capacity at three locations beginning in fiscal year 2011: Shawnee Fossil Plant Unit 10 in Kentucky, John Sevier Fossil Plant Units 1 and 2 in Tennessee, and Widows Creek Fossil Plant Units 1-6 in Alabama, including six units at the Widows Creek Fossil Plant. In addition TVA stated that it will going to eliminate 200 jobs at these plants starting in 2011, but the workers will be placed in other positions within TVA. CEO Tom D. Kilgore said that TVA would replace the sidelined coal power with greater reliance on nuclear power and energy efficiency.

Shawnee Unit 10 was the nation's first commercial-scale atmospheric fluidized-bed combustion boiler.

Plant Data

 * Owner/Parent Company: Tennessee Valley Authority
 * Plant Nameplate Capacity: 1,750 MW
 * Units and In-Service Dates: 175 MW (1953), 175 MW (1953), 175 MW (1953), 175 MW (1954), 175 MW (1954), 175 MW (1954), 175 MW (1954), 175 MW (1955), 175 MW (1955), 175 MW (1956)
 * Location: 7900 Metropolis Lake Rd., West Paducah, KY 42086
 * GPS Coordinates: 37.151667, -88.777222
 * Coal Consumption:
 * Coal Source:
 * Number of Employees:

Emissions Data

 * 2006 CO2 Emissions: 10,527,302 tons
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions: 35,815 tons
 * 2006 SO2 Emissions per MWh:
 * 2006 NOx Emissions: 18,216 tons
 * 2005 Mercury Emissions: 180 lb.

Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from the Shawnee Fossil Plant
In 2010, Abt Associates issued a study commissioned by the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, quantifying the deaths and other health effects attributable to fine particle pollution from coal-fired power plants. The study found that over 13,000 deaths and tens of thousands of cases of chronic bronchitis, acute bronchitis, asthma-related episodes and asthma-related emergency room visits, congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, dysrhythmia, ischemic heart disease, chronic lung disease, peneumonia each year are attributable to fine particle pollution from U.S. coal-fired power plants. Fine particle pollution is formed from a combination of soot, acid droplets, and heavy metals formed from sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and soot. Among those particles, the most dangerous are the smallest (smaller than 2.5 microns), which are so tiny that they can evade the lung's natural defenses, enter the bloodstream, and be transported to vital organs. Impacts are especially severe among the elderly, children, and those with respiratory disease. Low-income and minority populations are disproportionately impacted as well, due to the tendency of companies to avoid locating power plants upwind of affluent communities.

The table below estimates the death and illness attributable to the Shawnee Fossil Plant. Abt assigned a value of $7,300,000 to each 2010 mortality, based on a range of government and private studies. Valuations of illnesses ranged from $52 for an asthma episode to $440,000 for a case of chronic bronchitis.

Table 1: Death and disease attributable to fine particle pollution from the Shawnee Fossil Plant
Source: "Find Your Risk from Power Plant Pollution," Clean Air Task Force interactive table, accessed February 2011

Shawnee ranked 60th on list of most polluting power plants in terms of coal waste
In January 2009, Sue Sturgis of the Institute of Southern Studies compiled a list of the 100 most polluting coal plants in the United States in terms of coal combustion waste (CCW) stored in surface impoundments like the one involved in the TVA Kingston Fossil Plant coal ash spill. The data came from the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) for 2006, the most recent year available.

Shawnee Fossil Plant ranked number 60 on the list, with 467,616 pounds of coal combustion waste released to surface impoundments in 2006.

Coal Ash Waste and Water Contamination
In August 2010 a study released by the Environmental Integrity Project, the Sierra Club and Earthjustice reported that Kentucky, along with 34 states, had significant groundwater contamination from coal ash that is not currently regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The report, in an attempt to pressure the EPA to regulate coal ash, noted that most states do not monitor drinking water contamination levels near waste disposal sites. The report mentioned Kentucky based Mill Creek Station, Shawnee Fossil Plant and the Spurlock Power Station were three sites that have groundwater contamination due to coal ash waste.

Citizen groups

 * Coal River Mountain Watch
 * Kentuckians for the Commonwealth
 * Kentucky Environmental Foundation
 * Kentucky Riverkeeper
 * New Power
 * Kentucky Environmental Foundation, Berea, KY, phone: (859) 986-7565
 * Sierra Club Cumberland Chapter

External Sources

 * Existing Electric Generating Units in the United States, 2005, Energy Information Administration, accessed Jan. 2009.
 * Environmental Integrity Project, "Dirty Kilowatts: America’s Most Polluting Power Plants", July 2007.
 * Facility Registry System, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, accessed Jan. 2009.

Related SourceWatch Articles

 * Existing U.S. Coal Plants
 * Kentucky and coal
 * Tennessee Valley Authority
 * United States and coal
 * Global warming